SPRINGDALE, Ark. — The Texas League’s best hitting team continued to swing some hot bats Tuesday night.

Midland, which had a league-best .260 batting average this season, ripped 11 hits through the first six innings off Northwest Arkansas pitchers Yender Caramo and Tim Hill, and the RockHounds took a 1-0 lead in the Texas League Championship Series with a 5-4 victory over the Naturals at Arvest Ballpark.

J.P. Sportman broke a 3-3 tie when his sixth-inning bloop single drove in Viosergy Rosa, and Brett Vertigan’s drove in another run to give Midland a 5-3 lead. That held despite Northwest Arkansas getting a run in the ninth when Ryan O’Hearn doubled and later scored on a single by Samir Duenez.

“We swung the bats well and had a couple of good situational hits,” Midland manager Ryan Christenson said. “We were able to scratch five runs up there, and that was enough for the pitching staff.”

Northwest Arkansas had four hits through the first two innings and took a 3-2 lead when Duenez went the opposite way and pushed a solo home run just inside the left-field pole. The Naturals, however, were held to four more hits over the final seven innings.

Cam Gallagher ended Northwest Arkansas’ hitting woes with a seventh-inning double, but he was left there. Logan Moon then led off the eighth with an infield single, but he was erased on a double play.

“You have to give their guy credit,” Naturals manager Vance Wilson said. “He started pitching backwards and throwing a lot of offspeed pitches in fastball counts. We put a lot of weak ground balls into play and popups.

“He did a nice job of adjusting and we didn’t. We just got outplayed a little bit, and a couple of mistakes on defense that could have been double plays allowed some runs. Other than that, it was a good game.”

Rosa led off the sixth with an infield single to third, then went to third when a grounder by Andy Paz was mishandled by Mauricio Ramos, who also threw low to first. Sportman then blooped a single to shallow center to drive in Rosa, and Vertigan followed with his RBI single to score Paz.

“That’s playoff baseball,” Christenson said. “The beauty of it is every pitch is so huge. We made an error ourselves, and luckily it didn’t cost us there. The nature of playoff baseball is every out is important and every pitch is important, which makes it fun.”

SCHEDULE CHANGE: Due to the threat of inclement weather in the forecast, Games 3-5 of the 2016 Texas League Championship Series at Security Bank Ballpark will now be held Thursday through Saturday.